


Questions and Answers

by ShadeShine



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, She Wants to Understand, Trying to Understand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 17:23:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6997663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadeShine/pseuds/ShadeShine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peridot and Steven come over to the Maheswaran house to watch a show that they're hooked on with Connie.  It presents a weird sort of opportunity for a mother who is trying to be more understanding of the universe her daughter is a part of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Questions and Answers

Doctor Priyanka Maheswaran was many things. A gifted doctor with numerous responsibilities. A dutiful wife who very much loved her husband. A loving mother trying to be more understanding of the 'supernatural'.

That meant when Steven and a green skinned, yellow triangle haired friend of his showed up at her door, she smiled and welcomed them in. Connie had asked in advance, but she had forgotten until the very moment the pair showed up.

“How are you two today?” she asked as they stepped inside, nearly bouncing.

“Above optimal! Today is going to be great!” The green creature demonstrated its lack of understanding for basic decorum or inside voices.

“Doctor Maheswaran, this is Peridot,” Steven said at a much more acceptable volume.

“It's very nice to meet you, Peridot.” Secretly, Priyanka was on the fence. She was small and completely unlike the 'experiments' that showed up at the hospital. Still, the understanding that she was like those monsters set her worrying. 

Was a Gem one magical mishap away from being a monster?

She would have to ask more questions, another time. 

Thinking back, she would have to ask questions at all. Steven and Connie were both forthcoming, but how often was it easy to simply let the conversation die or to let the ebb and flow of her schedule drag her away?

How many times had she stayed her tongue instead of asking for fear of stifling Connie or scaring Steven?

_'How do you even work? What happens if you get hurt? Does normal medicine hurt you because you're part Gem?'_

Slowly, she was becoming more and more attached to Connie's only and best friend, and it was too easy to worry about every little thing.

“Is she...broken?” Peridot whispered at a volume entirely audible.

“Sorry. I was lost in thought.” Lying was difficult, and she could tell Steven worried. “Connie is upstairs. Would you two like some snacks?”

“Sure!” the pair said all at once. 

“I'll bring them up. Make yourselves at home.” Food distractions worked on patients as well as children.

She had bent about as far as she could go getting 'healthy' chips and crackers. If Connie was going to mess up her carbohydrate and fat intake, she was not going to do so with greasy regular chips in this household.

Still, she could handle letting the rules slacken up that far as long as Connie knew that such things were a 'once in a while' treat.

Coming upstairs, she handed off a bag of chips and a box of crackers to the three of them.

“This is the episode where Lilly's finally going to show how much she loves Hisao!” Steven cheered.

“I thought this episode was going to be about the battle for the Port of Yamaku.”

“Well, yes, but you're not reading the subtext, Peridot.” Connie smiled. “Oh, thanks mom.”

She set them down on the coffee table.

“Don't talk to me about subtext, sister. You're the one who doesn't see the glory of the Shizune and Kenji battle formation.” Peridot sighed. “Humans never understand the value of a relationship being a powerful battle formation.”

Priyanka raised an eyebrow and decided there was no time like the present to ask questions. “Is that important to Gems?”

“Of course! What's the point of combining your resources with a weakling?” 

She could understand the idea, though she would have focused more on the resources side than the weakling side.

She must have looked shocked, because Steven stood up and said, “that's not everything about it. Garnet's a relationship and she's like nine thousand and one percent love!”

“That's impossible,” Peridot and she said, though she added, “mathematically.”

However, he shook his head, “okay, it's two hundred percent love, then, since Garnet's really two people.”

“...I guess that's true.” Peridot conceded.

Priyanka eased herself into the recliner. “So 'Garnet' is really two different Gems?”

“Yes, Ruby and Sapphire. But they're almost always together, because they love each other.”

“So it's sort of like a marriage.” For what it was worth, that was easy enough to understand.

“Well, the way Garnet does it,” Connie spoke up.

“Yeah. Sometimes Garnet fuses with other Gems.”

Priyanka blushed and looked away. That sounded like the marriages of some of her coworkers!

“It's not like that, mom!” Connie almost shouted, worried.

“Like when she fused with Amethyst and Pearl to be Alexandrite at the dinner we had together,” the gem-human hybrid offered.

“Oh.” Part of her wondered if that was part of how they bred, but that was a question she would not ask in front of the kids.

“They fused just for a human dining ritual?!?” Peridot queried, leaning into Steven's personal space.

“It's a long story, I...” Steven fell silent.

No one filled that silence for a while.

“You couldn't exactly tell me that you were being raised by three Gems.” Priyanka nodded her head. It made a lot more sense now that everything was on the table. “I can admit that I would not have handled you explaining that you had three alien moms very well.”

That got a chuckle out of Steven and Connie, at least.

Peridot nodded, perhaps not understanding but willing to accept it. “So, Doctor. Your 'marriage'. Why did you choose to 'marriage' with your partner?”

She decided not to correct the improper use of words as much as they irked her. “To put it in Steven's terms, we're 'like nine thousand and one percent love'.”

“Mom, please don't try to be cool.” The children giggled nonetheless.

“So you did not join with him for protection or his battle strength? You are a healer if I understand your terminology, so a partner who can engage in combat would be an ideal second.”

“He is a pretty tough man, but...well.” She smiled, lost in a thousand memories for an instant. “I could talk for hours about that, and I think it's not as interesting as you might think it is.”

“Very well.”

“I do have a question for you three, though: fusion, is this something...you do? What is it exactly?”

Suddenly, Steven and Connie were looking in different directions, both of them away from her. “Well, I can do it, but...I don't do it very often.”

“I began the ritual but did not complete it. I believe I could provide a demonstration of one possible way to achieve the objective, but I would require a partner.”

“It probably won't work. I...it doesn't work all the time. But we can always just look at you and say 'ta-da'!” Steven stood up.

She nodded.

They both took up positions at the center of the living room.

“From what is explained to me, it is as simple as conducting a simple dance, but the particulars are complicated. Steven, you are more familiar, you lead the ritual.”

“Right, you just...” Steven offered his hand, and they engaged in a sort of bastardization of ballroom dancing.

Priyanka could appreciate the demonstration, of course, but it seemed so awkward. Peridot was a stubby little creature, and Steven had growing to do, too.

Still, they danced fairly well together despite the occasional stumbles on one part of the other, and those got more rare as the dance continued.

“And then, right about here...” Peridot suddenly dipped Steven. “We would f-whoa!”

Steven ended up flat on his back, and Peridot was atop him.

Before she could ask if they were all right, they started laughing and-

The flash of light left her seeing stars a moment.

It was bizarre to see the creature that laid on her floor. A twiggy body that probably beat two meters in height, with a sickly pale green for its skin tone and a very poofy triangle of black hair atop its head. Steven's red shirt and jeans covered her shame, but left both gems exposed to the air. Thankfully, she was just tall enough that her second set of arms stuck out without tearing Steven's shirt.

“Ta...da?” it said in a soft and feminine voice that barely reached her ears.

Her mind went back to the hospital, all of the grasping arms about to kill all of them.

“Wow!” Connie sounded nothing but impressed as she moved to hug them. “You two are awesome!”

“This is awesome!” The fusion hugged the girl with the lower set of arms and flexed with the other set. “I feel awesome and big!”

Slowly, Priyanka came back to the real world. The arms were thin, not massive, and this creature had a friendly face. This was not a monster trying to kill her, it was a stubby Gem and a nice boy stuck together.

Though she was sure she still looked nervous, she could at least take a breath and let it out. “So. This is fusion.”

“Yeah. I didn't expect it to work!” The fusion laughed, and there she could recognize a blend of Steven's laughter and Peridot's grating voice. “I've never tried fusing with a Gem before!”

_'Why don't you have four legs? Or eyes? Or two arms with four hands? Or two heads? Or two mouths?'_

Those and a million other questions rattled around in her brain.

The one that reached her lips was, “so you've tried fusing with humans before?”

The fusion and Connie simultaneously turned around, both looking abashed.

And there was the truth. Steven and Connie had attempted fusion before.

Beyond the truth laid the implications. She knew they were more than just friends, insofar as a teenager and a near teenager could understand such things. Was this a sort of initiation to sexual activity in Gem etiquette?

Now more than ever, she found herself cursing her lack of knowledge. For all she knew, Gems did not even engage in standard reproduction.

She inhaled and exhaled again, and hoped she sounded somewhat calm as she said, “I suppose you have. This is...just a combining thing, yes?”

“Yes. They...we...I...” the fusion stammered.

“We get bigger.” Connie filled in. “And it's an experience. Like two people become more than one person, but something different than they were before.”

That seemed honest enough. More of the truth than she thought, too. Not only had they tried, but they succeeded.

That was so many things. Worrying. Amazing. Confusing.

Priyanka nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay?!?” The fusion flashed bright white again.

She felt her breath catch in her throat as suddenly Peridot was laying on her coffee table and Steven on the floor.

“I'm trying to understand this.” She exhaled again, as softly as she could. “I can't be afraid to ask a question or hear the answer.”

She was really, really afraid to imagine that her daughter was around the age where kissing stopped being icky. On the other hand, her daughter had managed to learn swordfighting under her nose.

Just as the children breathed sighs of relief, though, she put on her best stern mom face and said, “that means you two have to be responsible. And you, too, Peridot.”

“Why me?” The little Gem managed a lot of umbrage on her knees on a coffee table...maybe it was the slight boost in height making her uppity?

“Because I don't want anything bad to happen to any of you, or any fusions you make. I know that you're going to do dangerous things in the future.” Priyanka sighed and offered a smile. “But if I don't worry every once in a while, you might forget that I want to be involved in your universe.”

“Mom!” Connie lunged over to hug her.

Steven joined her, hugging both of them.

As she wrapped her arms around the children, she noticed Peridot joining the formation from the side. “I don't know why we're doing this, exactly, but solidarity is key to team building.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the time for the show to begin had passed. She'd clue them in when they finally noticed, she decided.

She had set the DVR to catch this inane show, anyway.

But it wouldn't hurt to let them think they actually missed it for a few seconds, though. The look their faces might make up for the duo of heart attacks they tried to give her today...

And it would make her feel better about having to explain this all to Doug, bless his heart. As easygoing as he was compared to her, when something worried him it would worry him greatly.

That would come another day, though.

For now, she just enjoyed the moment.


End file.
